


Loving Her Was Red

by backtoblack101



Series: Sometimes We Forget [2]
Category: Agent Carter (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, F/F, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-09
Updated: 2015-06-09
Packaged: 2018-04-03 16:29:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4107499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/backtoblack101/pseuds/backtoblack101
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Peggy's funeral Steve pays a visit to the one person he knows will understand what he's going through.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Loving Her Was Red

**Author's Note:**

> A complimentary piece to my fic "Play Me A Memory" but you don't have to have read that to get this...

_Losing him was blue like I'd never known_

_Missing him was dark grey all alone_

_Forgetting him was like trying to know somebody you never met_

_But loving him was red_

_Loving him was red_

-.-.-.-

Steve knows he shouldn’t be here, knows he has no business being here, but there’s something pulling him forward – something lassoing itself around his gut and tugging him until his stomach churns and bile rushes up in his throat.

“Can I help you sir?” The receptionist that greets him is wide-eyed and smiling ear to ear, almost like the sterile building surrounding her is no deterrent to her spirit.

“I’m here to see a patient,” he explains, keeping his head tilted low so his baseball-cap shades his face. “Is there a, uh…” he glances down at the biro scrawl on the inside palm of his hand. “Angela Martinelli here?”

“Are you a relative?”

“I’m a friend of a friend…” It’s not a lie and yet the words still feel constricted and wrong against the roof of his mouth. “Grant Rodgers,” he offers and she gives him a smile like she’s not quite paid enough to care if it’s the truth.

“Ms Martinelli is in the common room,” she explains, pointing with a well-manicured finger to a set of double doors. “She should be over by the window; she likes to sit there on sunny days.”

-.-.-.-

He knows it’s her the second he steps into the room even though all he has to go on is a single picture taken half a century ago – her eyes still have the same twinkle even if her hair no longer bounces and her skin has lost its glow.

“Excuse me ma’am?” He lowers himself awkwardly into a seat next to her and waits for her eyes to rove around from the window, waits for the instant recognition that occurs when they land on his face.

“They said on the news you hadn’t aged a day,” she comments in lieu of greeting, her eyes taking in a face he’s sure she’s seen more than enough throughout her life. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you Steve,” she concludes finally, her cracked lips turning up into a smile.

He returned the smile and then let the silence of the nursing home consume them, both waiting for the other to speak first. He’d thought that just seeing her would be enough for him to understand why he’d felt it so vital to come here – dirt barely settled around Peggy’s casket and he’d felt a draw to Angie Martinelli, like she could offer him something all the words of condolence and strong slaps on the back couldn’t.

“I like your dress,” he offered eventually when the silence began to deafen him and her eyes began to sting the side of his face.

“Blue,” she hummed, eyes darting down to the pearly blue sundress that stopped mid-calf. “It’s my favourite colour.” A pause – she ran the silky material between aged fingers. “Actually it was her favourite colour, but it’s mine now too.”

Steve wants to play dumb, ask who she’s talking about, but they both know who it was that brought them together, several decades too late perhaps but the same woman has brought them both here today.

“What was your favourite colour before you met… her?” He asks instead and he doesn’t use her name because somehow it doesn’t feel like his place to use it – not in the presence of someone that built a life with her.

“Red.” She nods to herself, eyes still lingering on her dress. “It was red.”

“But not anymore?” He thinks he knows why but he wants to hear it – he wants to know he wasn’t the only person to touch Peggy Carter and get burned.

“No…” She looks at him and she’s daring him to make her say it because even now it hurts too much to say it of her own accord, so he does.

“Why?”

She swallowed and Steve could see the lump moving down her throat.

“Because red was the shade of her lipstick and the colour of her nails. It was the colour of the blood that poured from her every time I tended to her wounds. It was the colour smeared across my cheek every morning after she left for work and it was the hue of the passion that filled me to the brim whenever we were together.” She took a steadying breath and crystal like tears formed in the corner of her eyes like precious jewels she refused to part with. “She was red, and when I walked away from her all those years ago I gave up my right to ever love that colour again.”

**Author's Note:**

> idk.... like i really don't know where this angst is coming from, i wanted to write fluff today and so i started writing about why Angie's fav colour was red bc of Peggy but then my brain was just like "lol, no."


End file.
